DarkPrince

It was just a regular shot with a Fujifilm X100 mirrorless camera with basic Adobe Lightroom adjustments and a virtual Graduated Neutral Density filter to darken the sky but keep the foreground lit. Here's the raw photo straight out of camera: A few more from the same camera after editing a bit: There's something about the color rendition with this camera and it's Lens/Sensor combination that gives me so much more to work with and make POP than my full DSLR (I shoot with two Pentax K-5/K-5II cameras for most of my work).

*Correction* Apparently at some point in time I changed it from www.Facebook.com/MRHSports to www.facebook.com/MRHPhoto .... Oops ^.^

I forgot about this thread :P It's a month late but here's photos from the 3 practice rounds at the PGA at Whistling Straits up here in Wisco last month. Day 1: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.898829213522600.1073742073.522919604446898&type;=3 Day 2: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.898950866843768.1073742074.522919604446898&type;=3 Day 3: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.902279513177570.1073742077.522919604446898&type;=3 I started working for a newspaper 2 years ago now so I mostly do sports nowadays on my facebook page www.facebook.com/MRHSports I actually got prints done recently of these 3:

I'd say if he was pushing for a different role they may have been having trouble trying to fit him somewhere. These guys don't tend to change roles or personalities often. It's almost always the same 2 or 3 main commentators, 2 guys in the towers watching live feeds from different cameras, and 2 or 3 on course commentators following specific groups. I'd hazard a guess that if this is the case, they couldn't "find a role" for him outside of on course commentator. Maybe they let him Live-tweet instead :P

Small thing I might note. I was at the PGA all 7 days and the final 2 days I finally spotted Feherty (with the final groups of course). First thing I notice is he's in damn good shape actually for getting up in years, second thing I noticed was that while he's getting up in years, he was constantly having to RUN up the course as well as the CBS camera guys to get where the shots would roughly be landing.. I don't know if it's just the Straits setup that doesn't allow for cart travel, but I could honestly understand if he was pushing for a Booth/Tower job instead of on course commentator if he's constantly having to run around a golf course as he's getting older. Food for thought?.

I follow the @NoLayingUp guys on twitter as well as a few other ones like @TwoInchesShort or @Wrong_Fairway just for the entertainment and you can interact with them pretty readily. While NoLayingUp started the #TourSauce thing and #PrayForTedScott, it's taken on a life of it's own lol. Some of it comes off as dudebro humour, but honestly a lot of it is a fun fresh take on the tour and some of the just downright stupid things tour players do and get away with. My favorite lately though is the #PrayForTedScott meter when Bubba's not doing well. https://twitter.com/CharlieKane_/status/638072153540304896

Just got an email that Geneva National will be opening tomorrow. Kind of surprising to me though that the Lake Geneva courses are opening before even the local muni's considering they have hundreds of thousands of dollars more invested in upkeep but it's $39 for 18 holes (normally over $100 unless you find a deal) with a cart through April 17th. I've only played there twice in my life (Palmer and Trevino) but that's not a bad deal to play some pretty nice courses.

Seeing that he is coming out on Oprah, to me it seems like he's probably going to try and twist it into a sob story about how he was...forced or coerced into it. Again not to take away from the whole cancer survivor thing, but according to rumors and former team mates he's been doing it even before the cancer. My dad brought up a point today though. It doesn't matter whether he admits to being guilty (since everyone knows it anyway), it's not coming clean until he comes forward and apologizes to all of the teammates (past and present), doctors, officials and sponsors that had their lives destroyed by his constant lies and threats. In his quest for secrecy he has badmouthed so many people that at one time supported him it's absurd.

Nice! I wish my home course were a bit more photogenic, the only way I made mine more interesting was waiting until sunset or shooting using only Infrared light :P I've been dabbling in off camera flash/portraits lately so here are 2 experiments :P First is the daughter of a photographer I may become an assistant for soon, and second is just a horrible self portrait :P

So far I feel that the 3 most important things to understand really are: -The Exposure Triangle of ISO, Aperture (FStop), and Shutterspeed, how they are related and their effects on each other. -Understanding the effect of Aperture, Lens Focal Length, and Distance to subject on Depth of Field. -Learning what your lens can and cannot do. IE Optimum Sharpness, Focal Length/Zoom amount, maximum and minimum aperture. (The secret 4th thing is learning how to combat G.A.S. or Gear Acquisition Syndrome and stop spending copious amounts of money on things you don't need :P) I've been putzing around for a little over 2 years now and all of that is just now starting to click and I find myself thinking more about correct exposure in Manual mode than spraying and praying in the Program modes. Here's one I did the other day for a friend and his dad.

My old high school did fireworks after the homecoming game tonight. I managed to get home from work before they launched but really had no idea when it would happen. Settled down to watch DVR'd coverage of the Ryder Cup and they just start launching them like crazy. I only had enough time to get the tripod out, couldn't change the lens to anything wider due to street lights, and was fighting the damn autofocus because I couldn't turn it off quickly enough. Only got 3 shots off before they were over. Only one turned out: DA*60-250 F16 2.5sec ISO-500 A bird in the back yard And I couldn't quite get this to look remotely like what it SHOULD look like. The human eye I guess can see something like 18 EV values from darkest to lightest and a camera can really only capture 8.

Thanks, you gave us a place to do it though lol, so thank YOU :P I haven't been doing much due to working a ton but a few for fun .

Just posted a series of images from the vacation I just got back from in Door County, Wisconsin (first vaca in like 8 years) over at pentax forums, here are a few images but the rest will be up HERE .

Haha yeah, he had JUST stopped playing dead and was opening his eyes and just glaring at me. Eventually it started getting lively and crawling around the cart, falling off of it, climbing into my camera bag..etc But yeah he doesn't look too happy atm.

I was putting out on a hole when I realized there was something rather big inside of it. Turns out there was a baby snapping turtle stuck in the cup because the walls were too tall and slick for it to climb out. I got the little bugger out (and tapped in for par of course lol) and I always have my camera bag on me when I play so I had a little fun with it. I turned around to put it back down in a safer spot and it's equally little sibling had been walking across the green following me lol. One of them actually crawled up my backpack and fell into the camera compartment so I had to dig it out but eventually I set them down a bit further away from the green so they would hopefully not get run over or stepped on later. Here's one for size comparison/relevance And here's one for the younger guys who'll get a kick out of the horrible edit in lightroom.

This is definitely an overlooked point. My boss at work is one of the idiots that feels that given enough time, patience, and dedication one can master any simple sport. He feels that if you just swam over and over and over for years of course you'd be good and be pro. Or if you just ride a bike for a long time, eventually you would be good enough to go pro. He also conveniently ignores his logic when it comes to his babies like basketball and football, and golf. He says those sports you have to be gifted with coordination and whatnot but cycling I would argue requires just as much pardon the phrase but "god given" talent and athleticism. These people do the absolutely INSANE. They are riding over 100 miles a day over larger altitude changes than are capable in pretty much the entire midwest from eastern colorado to western virginia and doing it at just ridiculous speeds. Yes 25mph isn't fast...in a CAR, but on a bike, or even sprinting, it's nearly impossible to keep that pace unless you have practiced extensively, have worked very hard to keep your body in amazing shape, or you are riding in a large enough group that you can ride in the draft for extended periods of time on a downslope or a very flat grade. I may heavily dislike this man, but he IS a freak of nature like Phelps is to swimming, or Beckham (not a fan but he's popular) and Roberto Carlos' magic freaking left foot in soccer. Or if you want to call dancing and play acting a talent we could give the art of flopping solely to Christiano Ronaldo :P

I'm not really saying all of them cheat, but it just seems to be that the higher you rank in the sport of cycling, the higher the likelihood that you are cheating in some way or another. Believe it or not, Football (soccer), and Cycling are the two LARGEST sports worldwide if you don't include us idiot americans, 3rd is usually basketball, so there is a TON of money in it. Many of the teams are sponsored by companies far larger than USPS, T-Mobile has teams, Radio Shack had a team, HTC, Rabobank, Garmin, Cervelo, Shimano, and other companies have teams with large amounts of corporate backing (and if you look at any jersey there are at least 10 different sponsors on them). As others have said, there are likely many people who absolutely refuse to use any form of PED and have remained steadfast in their convictions. Such people are likely the support riders that just help keep pace during the race within the peleton or in the breakaway groups, but you will likely never see one at the top of the leader board at any given time for an extended period of time. They may be individual stage winners but I think it would be very highly unlikely that the overall individual winner wasn't somehow using. Another problem you may have is that standing your gound may cause you to lose your job. Many of these teams expect results and if you are the odd ball out in that you are not using but others are, I would imagine it couldn't be too hard to engineer getting them off the team in favor of someone on board. I would imagine it wouldn't be hard as they likely might not trust you since you aren't on board with it, but on the other hand if you came out and said something to the press, they could easily turn and accuse you of being in on it too and once that stigma is on you, it never goes away. Again I DO believe there are many clean riders, but they will almost always be overshadowed by the dirty ones. As much as many would knock cycling for being simple or "easy" compared to say the "grueling" sport of american football, any endurance athlete (Marathon, Cycling, Triathlon, etc...) is pushed to their physical limits no matter the training. My dad recently did a 600k ride in 40 hours to try and qualify for some nationwide competition. They left at 5:30AM, didn't get home until 4AM the next day, he took a shower, changed, ate a quick carb rich meal, took an hour nap, and then set out to finish the rest. I don't think he touched his bike for 2 to 3 days after that just out of exhaustion (he's 56 and can still do this stuff...he's nuts lol). Those pro guys are riding shorter distances than that but at MUCH faster pace (25-30mph). He said anyone who thinks it's easy to do that should get on your bike and try to ride even 1/4 of a mile at that speed, you wouldn't likely make it 1/8th at that pace. What riders use the things for is to drastically reduce recovery times. They are doing over 100 miles a day with a few breaks for over 3 weeks, being able to recover quickly is a tremendous advantage over the field. My dad said one of the latest ways to legally get the benefits of EPO without actually using it is for athletes to train at lower altitudes and then purchase or build a hyperbaric chamber and sleep in that to replicate living in a higher altitude climate. This causes your body to create more red blood cells while consequently thickening your blood (the major MAJOR danger of using it) but your body becomes far more efficient with oxygen at regular altitudes when it "thinks" it's been at higher altitudes where the air is thinner. It's similar to having to rest and acclimate at different altitudes on Everest to make sure you don't die of altitude sickness. Lastly, another tiny detail I omitted from my first post, the USADA stripped Armstrong of his titles, but USADA only has jurisdiction within the United States. The UCI is the governing body of cycling and they have requested to see the evidence that USADA has that prompted their decision. I would guess that UCI would likely follow suit but that doesn't mean they will. I liken it to say America stripping Merion Jones of her gold medal but the IOC does not...that would look very odd if that were the way it had happened. Either way the evidence will likely never see the light of day, neither will the testimonies (whether for or against), but this is likely not over and won't be for a very long time.

Forgot something that might be minor or major, but if I remember right the reason that this is a governmental inquiry is because the team was sponsored by a government organization. The United States Postal Service gave them sponsorship money which it is alleged they used to procure illegal drugs for their team. I think the argument (at least a few years ago) was that it was misappropriation of government funds that allows them to investigate instead of a private one?

I follow it (cycling) casually and my dad has been following it doggedly since he was in college since it's the only athletic activity that his knees have allowed him to do since he f'd them up in college. My dad can be a cynical man but he still had a lot of faith in the sport (Hell, the bike I got handed down was an exact replica of the '99 USPS Tour de France Trek Madone bike to which he had the matching helmet, socks, jersey, shorts...etc) He's been a pharmacist longer than I've been alive and generally has a good understanding of the chemistry involved with many of the chemicals used in doping and the practices. We got into the discussion the other day about Lance's "giving up" and we both just came to the conclusion that the amount of evidence is just too much for him to fight. No I don't have proof or numbers or anything, but over the past 14 years it's been quietly known that Armstrong is one of the most manipulative and intimidating figures in his sport (as someone had made mention of his likeability factor being zero). We boiled it down to two things. He's either A: Totally innocent and being completely screwed (very hard to believe if you have ever followed this story more than the once in a while it pops up in the paper) or B: We just witnessed one of the greatest media manipulations in sports. The man is one of the most media savvy people ever, he's always known how to make a headline or turn things to his advantage. This latest release as someone else said leaves it up to us to decide whether he's innocent or not and it makes a really good play to our emotions. He essentially plays the martyr card and just says woe is me, I'm tired of fighting, leave me be I don't care anymore. But this is almost a slap in the face for people who have used him as an influence or example of someone who never gave up. He came back from cancer he wasn't supposed to survive, never gave up. He got back on his bike and worked his ass off, never gave up. Won the Tour de France, never gave up, won 7 Tours, never gave up and retired at the top of the world. In the last 6 years I've noticed more and more rumblings of former team members or doctors getting coming under investigation, Landis confesses and outs Armstrong on national TV and is then dismissed as seeking revenge because the radio shack team denied him a spot on their roster. He also implicated at least 2 other members (Leipheimer, and Zabriske) and the team leader Johan Bruyneel. Tyler Hamilton and George Hincapie have also joined Landis and said they would testify to large doping regimes present during the USPS' domination of the Tour from 98-05. You also have the issue of Lance's '99 urine samples testing positive for EPO, he in turn mounted a legal move to dismiss the claims and successfully "discredited" the testing agency. He argued the samples ahd been improperly handled and that they shouldn't have even known they were "his" samples to begin with since they are only given batch numbers and from what stage/date they were taken during that tour. Ironically, the same lab he discredited is also the the same lab that definitively prooved that Landis doped and their assertions held up in court. The other side of the coin is that 12+ people are willing to perjure themselves in front of a grand jury and their government just to prove that one guy who made himself into an American hero by nearly dying, coming back from cancer and winning one of the 3 largest cycling events (Tours of France, Italia and Spain) 7 times, raising millions of dollars for cancer research, cheated. Of the road/track, what he has done is highly commendable and yes should be looked at under a different lens, but IF what they are alleging is true, he's one of the biggest frauds in history :/ -On another note, yes it's extremely hard to not come to the conclusion that all of them cheat. It has been shown numerous times that PED or even recreational drug culture is always YEARS ahead of any form of definitive testing. The common practice in recent years that caused the out of competition testing was to use the substances in the months leading UP TO the race to slowly build up your hematocrit levels (amount of red blood cells. More cells=more endurance), and to create larger stronger muscles through testosterone and HGH regimes. This in small amounts made sure that your tests never spiked too high and set off any alarms like Landis 11:1 Testosterone to Epitestosterone levels (as a comparison, 4:1 is when the alarm goes off) during the 17th stage of the TDF. For the longest time EPO was virtually impossible to test for and is still almost impossible to 100% prove guilt without having to face some form of doubt in the testing process.

Thanks, I've recently begun to look into getting some prints made of some and selling them in the area but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the logistics and overhead when it comes to pricing since I don't think they are super amazing and feel weird charging $20-30 a piece depending on size/quality of the paper + the cost of gas driving to the photo lab 45 minutes away lol. Thanks again for the compliment. I'm currently revamping my photobucket but I've always got random stuff up there.

A relatively affordable way to do it with a camera is a LensBaby, they make a few different kinds with different effects but I think they are all tilt-shift (which is what I meant when I said tilt/focus...had a brain fart -.-) The cheapest way, instagram which I'm pretty sure all of those photos were taken with or are from.

This thread doesn't seem to get too much action :P I've been shooting for a year and a half and for maybe 3 and a half months with my current Pentax K-5 (which of course is finally getting replaced by a full frame K-3 after 4 years). I did it for fun with my parents Nikon D80 until they got sick of me "borrowing" it so they got me a Canon Rebel T1i which I never really liked much. Bought the K-5 in may and have been going nuts with it. SO here are a few of my favs (the rest can be found on my photobucket and I'm happy to say I have 2 published on Pentax Photo Gallery on their site :)

A lot of this just looks like typical instagram tilt/focus filters or w/e they are where like a perfect circle is in focus but everything else is blurry. As Iacas said DoF is purely the effect of the size of the aperture used during the exposure. As an example, here are 2 shots I took with my 55mm F1.4 prime lens. F 1.4 is an extremely large aperture and I think 1.2 is generally the largest you can get commercially, but at this aperture, the Depth of Field is so small at close ranges I can describe it as the size of a nickel or quarter. If it's not on the EXACT focal plane, it won't show up in focus. IN both of these, only the very center of the images is in focus and you can barely read that it says "Arcane" below one and "Joker" above the other. This is the opposite of say this one which I took at F4.0 Or this which I took taken at F7.1 Lastly, this was a sunrise taken over a lake with fog coming off of it, shot at F14.0 (apologies if this shows up really big, not sure if it will automatically resize) ( For a larger panoramic click HERE ) But essentially the "larger" the F number, the smaller the aperture (less light is entering the lens) and the more "appears" to be in focus both in front of or behind the primary focal point/plane. Smaller F numbers are great for portraits because you can keep the subject in focus (face) and the background can be purposely blurred by shooting at say F2.0 or smaller.

My long story short, yes. My friend/league partner and I started playing together a few years ago after some random chance meetings on the course...and now I'm best man in his wedding lol